Chang'e 4

Chang'e 4 achieved the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the Moon on January 3, 2019. The lander touched down in the Von Kármán crater, located within the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the largest and oldest known impact crater on the Moon.

Chang'e 4 relies on the Queqiao relay satellite, which China placed in a halo orbit around the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point to maintain a line of sight to both the lander and ground stations on Earth. Without Queqiao, direct communication from the lunar far side to Earth would be physically impossible.

The mission deployed the Yutu-2 rover, which has far exceeded its designed three-month lifespan and continued operating for years on the lunar surface. Yutu-2 has traveled well over one kilometer across the far side, making it the longest-operating lunar rover in history.

Chang'e 4's instruments detected materials from the lunar mantle on the surface, providing new evidence about the Moon's early formation and impact history. The mission also carried a sealed biosphere experiment that successfully germinated cotton seeds, marking the first biological growth ever on the Moon.